I'd also like to point out this was already passed in Congress in 1995 in an overwhelming majority and every President(Clinton, GWB, Obama) has said since they will do this and just ended up kicking the can to avoid the political fallout. I don't think it is a smart move, but America has more or les...

This is looking really bad for Trump. Flynn looks like he entered a guilty plea as a deal with Mueller to testify directly against the administration that Trump directed him to contact the Russian government. Kushner and POTUS are definitely in Mueller's sights. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/...

It might be worth mentioning the innocent-until-proven-guilty principle, too. Since most incidents of sexual harassment (and worse) probably take place when only the victim and perp are present, there's likely to be a "her word against his" situation. It's often said that victims aren't b...

Hippo, You make it sound like it's an American thing. I'd like you to show me one major society where it's the case that sexual harassment of women by men is significantly less than in the US. Scandanvia. Canada. Otherwise, yeah. EDIT: Although I think it takes lots of different forms depending on ...

I thought the WaPo article went a bit far with the self-righteousness. Isn't "misrepresenting themselves" what all undercover reporters do? It wasn't just 'misrepresentation' it was trying to feed a fake story to WaPo, that's a lot further than most undercover reporters go, who usually ar...

It's hard for me to be logical about this, right now. I probably need a lot more distance from it before I can think about any of it rationally. 'I feel like we'd all be better off if the Republican party ceased to exist' was my attempt to be euphemistic about the fact that, at the moment, there's ...

Lying also serves as a loyalty test and function. Trump tells a lie so outlandish everybody knows its false and then requires his subordinates to repeat it. The ones who do are loyal and the ones who don't he questions. It also means once they start publically professing his bullshit(and that's real...

How much improvement would people expect from something like hate speech laws in the US? Given most countries that have mild hate speech laws have some of these same problems.... Not a lot. Honestly, if we had laws like that I'd be more scared of their misuse by a majority of the population using t...

What about out-of-country-ers? Not only does the state get more money, but it reduces the trade deficit while exporting your culture, creates connections with the children of foreign elites, and gives the rest of the world a massive incentive not to bomb your country? And it's not like, long term, ...

Yeah, when the polling is getting to the low single digits of support broken down by demographics, I don't think it will be easy to distinguish between actual approval or just noise in the sample. But the general point is that explicit support of white supremacy when asked is so low that we're havin...

Fun fact, polling on nazis, white supremacy, and confederacy shows that other than nazis, the US is aOK with the other two. Support for Nazis is low, but support for white supremacy is higher, and finally, support for confederacy is pretty high. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-american...

You can't close all the loopholes. The biggest one being that if you tax estates over $300k at 100%, no one is going to leave an estate bigger than $300k to tax, they will make sure to donate all the money or try to consume as much as possible of it before death. Now, you can't always plan for that(...

It seems to me that the Trump presidency is pretty much a libertarian administration. ... Which completely ignores the travel ban and the anti-immigrant sentiment, how Session's is stepping up the war on drugs or increasing civil forfeiture, Trump's attacks on free trade, sanctuary cities or the fr...

So, deep down, everyone is either male or female, gay or straight, theistic or atheistic, Republican or Democratic, even if people self-identify otherwise? It's not a deep down thing, but it is indicating that most independents are actually pretty one sided. I think this both indicates how set peop...

What about 15th Amendment removal? It's a silly amendment and was only added cause people misinterpreted "high crimes and misdemeanors" as cause for congressional impeachment and removal. That said, maybe he'll go so buck-wild that Pence and the cabinet take it upon themselves. Unlikely, ...

Um, don't overlook the fact that many people are rejecting political parties altogether. Registered voters in California as of February 10, 2017, by political party (bolding mine): Most of the research actually shows this is bullshit. As much as some people don't claim to vote always for one party ...

In looking at 2018, we should probably also keep in mind that Democrats had a very low voter turnout compared to Republicans - if I'm remembering right, Clinton would have won if Democratic turnout for her had matched Obama's. In essence, Republicans were far more energized and excited than Democra...

Are Americans really that unmovable in their voting? In short, yes. There's a good chance that a year from now Trump will be buried even deeper in scandals, with a GOP in civil war over whether to impeach him, and having achieved absolutely nothing. In such a scenario, is there any reason why the D...

Trump would have been terrible for Democrats, probably worse considering how much better the conservative media is at hyping up their base. The only weird thing would be Trump beating Hillary and Bernie. Like why would voters pick Trump over Bernie if they want populist,? And why would they want Tr...

The number of income brackets isn't the reason the tax code is complex. It's complex because it reflects the economy that it's trying to tax. It's something politicians don't like to talk about. Yes and no. The US tax code at least from my brief comparison to others is far and away the most complic...

Yeah, I don't disagree with anything you said(nor would I think Alexander, who himself hates Trump pretty deeply). But I do think the article at least explains what these people are feeling even if they are reacting in extremely the wrong way to to those feelings.

"White identity" seems like an attempt to lay claim to the language of those who are clearly suffering to express a kind of suffering that is much less clear. I mean, that's the only explanation I can accept -- if someone tells me they're being oppressed by liberal jerks telling them they...

unless you also consider it good that people can choose what's best for themselves. I'm assuming you do believe that's a good thing, and Trump was chosen, so... Can they? The Republican party strategy has been to make sure people don't have enough information to vote in their best interest. I don't...

The NYT article cited a poll that only 3% of the voters they talked to would change their vote if they could, and only 1% would change it to Hilldawg. It does make things seem difficult. There's a lot of room between Trump and the-worst-possible-president-you-could-possibly-imagine. Maybe I lack th...

⋅ Most US citizens are actually pretty happy with their current health care plans(although not with the system as a whole). But when those two things come into conflict they often focus on their own plans rather than the system. Do you have a cite for this somewhere? I'm not seeing any, a...

I'm deeply skeptical to the idea that credible research will halt the moment we start restricting the rights of corporations to monetize it. But more than that: I'm deeply skeptical of the idea that the pros of capitalizing medicine somehow outweigh the cons in the first place. Yeah, we should do m...

There are many countries that have had a stable universal healthcare system for years, I'm not sure why the US can't adopt those. Like, Israel's system isn't perfect (it's just one I know well) and it's much better and much more accessible. Well. There is a ton of reasons, I list some but it is def...

Besides, it's mostly irrelevant to my point that one of the reasons the US is so expensive is the lack of incentives anywhere in the process to control costs or do any sort of cost benefit based on how long you are expected to live. In most other countries insurance or the government would look at ...

Millions spent on end of life care in that situation doesn't sound like a good use of resources. People always love to bring up end-of-life care, as though old folks are the only ones getting expensive medical bills. To use a personal example, my fairly routine appendectomy and a single hospital st...

It's not as if there's some sort of critical shortage re: cancer treatment; someone getting chemo doesn't mean someone else can't . That's why it seems kind of fucked up to me to talk about this in terms of how much we're willing to spend to save a life -- the only reason we're even having that con...

I don't think you're wrong to think of it as bullshit, because -- it kind of is. But I also think you need to keep in mind the scope of the problem it's trying to solve: The number one cause of bankruptcy in America pre-ACA was medical expenses. Near the end of his life, my grandfather -- who, than...

I think if you look at what is driving the right wing around the world, immigration seems to be a huge part of that. Sure a lot of Trumps supporters probably just in general overlap with GOP voters, but I think it is clear that immigration is the main reason for this populist uprising we are seeing ...

One of the few articles I've seen that has a more... measured take on the plan. I actual suspect a lot of Trump voters(who if you remember are more middle class than poor) fall into this category. Overall if you see who The Affordable Care Act helps and hurts I think it matches that. https://cdn0.v...